1

Hi,

I know it’s not always the machine that is slow, and it’s just the way the user is using it. But in this case, even I find it is slower. I have had time to walk away from the remote session, go get coffee a donut and nuke my lunch in the microwave for 6 minutes, and then come back and have the computer still attempting to open Word. I have done a Malwarebytes Scan on it and found 13 trojans and removed those, and I have done a defrag. I do believe the user this time when he says it is still slow, and I can’t upgrade him to a new PC. To make matters worse, I can’t go to his desk because his desk is in another country.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this one? I am thinking of going through msconfig again and disabling anything that isn’t 100% needed. Last time I disabled things I knew wasn’t needed off of the top of my head. I turned off System Restore to ensure the viruses were gone. I made him back up everything to his network drive in case his laptop does die within the new few days.

Does anyone have any ideas, because replacing it or blowing it away and starting over aren’t options for me at this point.

3 Spice ups
2

Question: How much RAM and what CPU and how much free space on HDD?

Recommendation: Run CCleaner, MBAM, Spybot, SuperAntiMalware, Defraggler, uninstall any unnecessary software, delete local profiles that are not being used.

Using the above steps I can usually squeeze a decent amount of speed out of an aging machine.

Note: If it has 512MB of RAM, just give up now.

3

With my luck it probably does. It’s running XP too to top it off.

4

I hear you on the problem on him being in another country, but… man, you don’t have a CHOICE here. The laptop is toast, it needs a new OS.

Could you maybe ship him a hard drive with the OS and all his software preinstalled? If you have a system with identical specs around, that would be pretty easy.

The system you’re working on probably can not be fixed in any meaningful way. Once it’s had trojans and rootkits and who knows what else, you’re at the “unacceptable repair time and/or risk” level.

5

severe latency could be HD related. I would run HDtune or some type of hard drive test. Is it painfully slow under a fresh or different profile? In taskmanager, what is hogging the most resources?

6

That’s the thing. I can’t tell. I will have to look again and see what’s hogging the resources but everything is saying it’s at 0% or 1% except for the system idle. To make matters worse I don’t have replacement parts either were I can ship him out a new preconfigured hard drive. I also can’t make him log in under a different user because my boss took him off of the domain when she set him up ages ago. So I’m pretty much hooped there as well. I’m almost at the point where I have to tell him to take it to a local tech and get them to look at it because I’m half blind here.

7

At this point, I’d agree with the local tech aspect. Trying to remotely solve an issue at this point is probably hopeless and is wasting both your time and your users. I’m sure if you explain things to your boss, with what you’ve tried and the steps you’d recommend that you can’t perform remotely, she’d understand.

While we have remote users here, they are only about a ~5 min drive away (except 1 user) so while we attempt remote help, if we hit this stage we’d grab the physical machine and work on it directly.

8

My boss always tells them to take it in to the Geek Squad if she can’t do it remotely over the phone. I’m still teaching her how to use Remote Assistance to troubleshoot, but I am trying. The guys are normally very scared of taking it into Best Buy or any other tech because they all think they have sensitive info on the machines.

9

Sounds like time to do a fresh install.

2 Spice ups
10

But I can’t do that remotely.

11

Could you have him send it to you instead of going to a local company? That way you’ll know it’ll be right. And considering what those incompetents at Best Buy charge, international shipping will STILL be less expensive anyway!

Honestly, that’s a horrible setup you guys are running for that location.

12

He doesn’t have a location. All of our remote guys work from their homes. I didn’t make this setup. I walked into this mess which I am trying to fix.

I will ask my boss if I can ship it here.

13

No go on the shipping it here.

Update is - Did Defraggler, SuperAntiSpyware, cleaned out MSConfig, turned off a lot of services that he didn’t need. Uninstalled some programs.

He has a 2GB RAM and 1.83 GHz CPU.

He is willing to try it for a while with what we have done to it today and see if that improves things.

14

He clearly needs better anti-virus as well.

15

Which is funny because it is endpoint by symantec.

16

Wow, so like it has the worst possible antivirus around. :smiley:

I’m sorry you’re in this bad situation; unless they change their policy, this computer simply will not ever be in good shape again. (IMHO)

17

Yeah. I have no choice but to work with this. And now a vp has the same issue on a lenovo.

18

I would install Acronis Drive Monitor on the computer with the slow hard disk performance (if you can).

My guess is the drive is dying - this will cause all sorts of performance issues.

Dunno about the Lenovo - probably not related, but let’s concentrate on one problem at a time.

19

I’ll try that if he is still complaining about it being slow. I won’t know for a few days still.